Cheating in casinos is much more common than casinos like to admit. Although game protection is important to casinos, it’s just about impossible to catch every cheat.
You may not be sympathetic for the billionaire casino owners. But in games such as poker, honest players can be easily taken advantage of. This article explains some of the cheating technology actively being used in casinos today, and how to spot cheating card players.
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Although playing in an established casino environment does offer a level of protection, it is not complete protection.
Dealers are trained to report suspicious behavior that may allude to cheating. But dealers are human, and are easily fooled by professional players. Just take for example a magician that can make something seemingly disappear, even with your close observation.
Casino surveillance staff watching video footage are no different. And although they are able to review video footage repeatedly, a casino cheat needs to be suspected of cheating before a proper review takes place. The professional cheats avoid suspicion to begin with.
Environments where cards can be handled create the possibility for cheating. Marked cards are quite common but more so in private games. You’ve probably heard of them but in case you haven’t: basically special dyes can be added to cards. The dye is invisible to the naked eye, but can be seen with infrared cameras and special lenses. The technology itself is quite simple. In fact most mobile camera phones are quite sensitive to infrared light. And through the use of an infrared illuminator, cards can be illuminated, with the light being detected by the mobile phone camera. In fact generally the cheaper cameras are more sensitive to infrared light, so you don’t need expensive equipment.
Casino surveillance often believe that the use of infrared illuminators would easily be detected by CCTV cameras. The reality is the infrared light is indistinguishable from visible light when viewed on camera. In the casino environment, there tends to be many flashing lights, shadows and reflections. So unless casino surveillance staff are very carefully monitoring suspicious objects, it would be very difficult to detect infrared sources. Furthermore, some of the more sophisticated technology requires a very short burst of radiation which may not even be detected by most CCTV cameras which operate at 25 or so frames per second. So all that’s required to see through a card is a very short burst of infrared light and a high frame rate camera. Then with the right equipment, it would be nearly impossible to detect even if casinos surveillance staff reviewed video footage.
Card counters are not new, but the technology is developing very rapidly. What was impossible years ago is now reality. Just consider how quickly mobile phone technology has evolved. But cheating devices are not necessarily built into mobile phones. In some cases, they may be the perfect cover at the table. But most casinos wont allow any electronic device to be at the table. In some casinos, you can freely sit at a table on your phone or even listen to an mp3 player with earphones.
The more modern counting devices use an adaptation of the infrared technology. They can both read cards and automatically count. An example of the sophistication is the side of a stack of cards can be penetrated with radiation, and read by a high resolution camera. 4K resolution might seem sufficient, but some wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation are only visible in lower resolutions with off-the-shelf components. So only rare light sensors are capable of reading the resolutions required. Keep in mind that cards are very thin, so the high resolution is required to read the sides of cards when penetrated with radiation. Although the technology is expensive and rare today, we can expect the technology to be more widespread in a few years.
You wouldn’t normally expect secrets to be released on a gambling forum, because generally players with effective technology tend to keep it private. But gambling forums are often used by professional teams to recruit new players. In fact that’s one of the primary purposes of GamblersForum.com. Although most casino gambling forums tend to be full of irrelevant and inaccurate information, even casino game protection experts lurk on forums to stay informed of potential new technology.
There are cheating devices in just about every casino game. The more sophisticated devices are roulette computers as explained on the page explaining tips to play roulette, although they cheat the casino owners and not the players. If your focus is card games, you need not worry about such devices and can focus on how your opponents may be getting an unfair advantage over you.
Again playing in a reputable casino does provide you with some protection. But it is far easier for a cheat to take advantage of you in private games in the home environment. Here are a few things to check for you ensure you aren’t being cheated:
Check for any objects on or near cards: it can be any object including a mobile phone, or even a fake stack of chips. Use the same lenses worn by cheats to spot marked cards: see what they see.
Observe your opponent’s partners or associates: usually cheats work in teams. By observing your opponent’s associates, you can see if there’s potential collusion.
Back in the 1800s or even 1900s if someone cheated at poker it might be a case of pistols at dawn - although it didn’t stop people then. The consequences have lessened now so it’s no wonder there are always people looking for an illegal edge in poker.
Cheating in poker is as old as the game and sophisticated cheaters can make a living from it, especially in less formal settings. So if you’re playing poker seriously you should spend some time learning about cheating and how to spot it. Here are a couple of tips to get you started.
Low-skill methods
These are tricks that don’t involve a high degree of skill to pull off, which include avoiding fees or looking at other player’s cards. The benefit of this is it’s pretty hard to prove and it can feel awkward confronting other players. Another tactic is removing some chips from the game so that some winnings are preserved rather than being risked in large hands. Because it can be hard to call these cheats the best method is if you suspect any cheating, walk away from the table as soon as possible. It’s hard enough winning in poker without having to beat players tilting the odds in their favour.
This can be common practice and is incredibly effective. It involves ‘marking’ the back of the cards so that you can see what other players are holding. There are numerous levels of cheating within this technique, from marking one or two key cards to gain a slight advantage to knowing every card in the pack. Substances (called juice or ‘daub’) can also be used as a subtle means of marking cards. Changing packs regularly or even bringing your own pack to private games is a way of mitigating against this tactic.
Collusion
Collusion is incredibly common in poker; there are a number of different ways to collude to get an advantage. There are a few tactics: ‘soft play’ involves failing to bet or raise in a situation where this would be normal to avoid costing a partner money; ‘whipsawing’ is where players raise each other to trap players in between; ‘dumping’ is where one colluder will deliberately lose to a partner and ‘signalling’ is the trading of information between colluders.
To avoid collusion be aware of suspicious behaviour where the actions of one person benefits the other. Proficient colluders are very difficult to spot. It’s unlikely that players who are colluding will seem intimate - in fact they will likely be well practiced at ignoring each other. It’s better to look for players to raise and re-raise one another when there is someone else in the pot - but rarely have a showdown.
String Betting Cheat game forbidden treasures nokia 105.
This is an illegal type of bet where a player doesn’t put all of their chips into the pot in one motion and instead puts them in using multiple motions. This helps the player to see what effect putting the chips into the hand has before raising. String betting is rare in well run and organised poker tournaments. There are clear rules about how you place your raise into the pot and knowing these means if you ever come across string betting you should be able to deal with it immediately.
In an organised tournament you must verbally state the amount when raising and if you don’t state the amount you should place all of your chips. A forward motion counts as when a player moves chips past the betting line. Although most poker tables don’t display the betting line it can be considered where the wood meets the poker cloth. The key here is the forward motion, and when this is made your chips are considered part of the pot.
Hand Mucking
Using this technique a cheat hides cards in his hand with the purpose of switching them later in the game. This can be very effective if used with collusion, and especially if the dealer is supporting the hand mucking. To spot this look for players who are doing something which may be distracting: they will need to switch the cards to their current hand and may use a distraction to help do this. Experienced ‘hand muckers’ will be almost impossible to spot but there normally has to be a distraction. Look for this rather than actually trying to spot cards.
Cheating in poker is hard in organised settings but still exists, and in less formal settings can be rife. As a rule of thumb if you turn up to a house party and big money poker is suggested, ignore it!